It is hard to believe that 6 years, a significant proportion of my life, have passed since I started serving as the editor-in-chief (EIC) of Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport (RQES) in 2012. Almost 40 years have passed since I first learned of RQES when I was still an undergraduate student at the Nanjing Normal College (now the Nanjing Normal University). One day in 1980, Professor Shaowu Xu at the Nanjing Normal College, who received his physical education graduate training at Springfield College/New York University in the 1930s, showed me an old copy of Research Quarterly, which later was retitled RQES, and told me that this was “the journal” in the field. In 1985, I started seriously reading RQES articles sent by Professor Margaret J. Safrit to the Shanghai Institute of Physical Education (now the Shanghai University of Sport) in China before she gave the first ever measurement lectures in China. Still a graduate student majoring in exercise physiology at the Shanghai Institute of Physical Education, I served as her lecture translator and became her doctoral student in 1986 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. I have since authored or coauthored 28 articles and more than 100 abstracts in RQES, have served as a regular reviewer since 1990, and served as the section editor of Measurement and Evaluation between 1999 and 2005 for RQES before becoming the EIC of RQES. Clearly, RQES has been a major part of my career as a scholar, and in fact being able to serve as EIC of RQES was part of my American academic dream.
I set four specific goals before starting my RQES editorship: (a) organize and publish more issues and articles focusing on hot topics in our fields, (b) extend the international influence of the journal, (c) explore new technology and media for future information dissemination, and (d) further enhance the quality and impact of RQES. Looking back, I am pleased to report that we made great progress in meeting most of these goals. For the hot topic goal, we organized two specific sections on effective teaching in physical education (84[4], 2013 and 85[1], 2014) and physical literacy (87[1], 2016). When publishing Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper’s RQES lecture paper “The History of Aerobics (50 Years and Still Counting),” I also did an interview with him (see 89[2], 2018) that was very well received. As a result, I did another interview with Dr. Charles (Chuck) B. Corbin for his “Concept” book, which also celebrates its 50th anniversary this year (see the interview in this issue). I have found that we can learn from these interviews not only the remarkable half-century journeys of these great books but also so much on the historical changes and progress of our fields as well as the tremendous contributions made by these and other scholars. To extend the international influence of the journal, we published supplements dedicated to the Chinese Children and Youth Physical Activity Study (84[Suppl. 2], 2013) and a major international conference on teaching games for understanding (87[Suppl. 2], 2016), and we are preparing to report on another major Chinese youth fitness study in a coming issue. We also made the effort to include more international scholars on our editorial team, including both the editorial board and associate editors. Manuscripts submitted to RQES just this year have been from 48 different countries, and RQES is clearly reaching researchers worldwide! As for new technology and media, we have archived all published RQES articles and its previous titles to create a rich database of kinesiology research, which needs more promotion and use. With regard to impact and quality, we created a new feature called “Top 10 Research Questions,” in which one scholar or a few known scholars is invited to present the top 10 research questions in a specific area to help graduate students and young scholars develop their research lines and jump on timely questions so as to make meaningful contributions to the literature, which in return will help them develop their scholarship. So far, 15 extremely well received “Top 10 Research Questions” articles have been published. In fact, a few of them have been translated into other languages. As for quality control, I have been working hard to eliminate inappropriate statistical analysis and reporting, especially p-value abuse, and I am pleased to report that the impact of RQES has steadily improved.
Although I enjoyed these progresses, these progresses I have to admit that there were hard, difficult, and challenging times. Besides the many hours each week of this no-pay job, two of the most significant challenges, as I described in my interview with Dr. Corbin, are to draw top scholars, especially those in exercise science, to submit their best research papers to RQES and to find people willing to provide timely and high-quality reviews. It takes a village to raise a journal! I therefore call for kinesiology researchers to submit their best research to RQES and for kinesiology institutes to value and reward review and editorial services provided by scholars in their institutes.
I would like to thank many people for their support during the past 6 years—without them I don’t think that I could have overcome the challenges: Dr. Mark Fischman, the former EIC of RQES, for his great support during the editorship transition; the RQES editorial board for its unending support of my new ideas and initiatives; all of the associate editors and the hundreds of reviewers whose expertise and excellent service are the backbone of the RQES operation; Thomas Lawson of SHAPE America and Catherine Ott of Taylor & Francis Group for their great operational support; and finally Heidi Krahling, the RQES editorial coordinator, for her excellent editorial skills, hard work, and great support. In addition, I want to thank all of the authors who contributed to RQES and finally all of you, the readers of RQES.
Finally, I am pleased that the mantle of RQES has been passed to good hands: Professor A. Mark Williams of the University of Utah is the new EIC of RQES. Professor Williams is a leading researcher in the neural and psychological mechanisms underpinning the acquisition and development of perceptual-cognitive and perceptual-motor skills. He has published almost 180 journal articles in peer-reviewed outlets in numerous fields and written 15 books, almost 80 book chapters, 60 professional articles, and 91 journal abstracts. He has served as the EIC for the Journal of Sports Science and executive editor for the journal Human Movement Science and sits on the editorial boards of several leading journals in the field. We are looking forward to his leadership!